Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is a technology used to perform high-resolution cross sectional imaging. It is often applied to imaging biological tissue structures, such as the human eye, for example, on microscopic scales in real time. Optical waves are reflected from an object or sample and a computer produces images of cross sections or three-dimensional volume renderings of the sample by using information on how the waves are changed upon reflection.
OCT may be performed based on time-domain processing of Fourier-domain processing. The latter approach includes a technique known as swept-source OCT, where the spectral components of the optical signal used to illuminate the sample are encoded in time. In other words, the optical source is swept (or stepped) across an optical bandwidth, with the interference signal produced by the combination of the source signal and the reflected signal being sampled at several points across this optical bandwidth. The sampling clock, which is typically designed to sample the interference signal at equally spaced points across the optical bandwidth, is referred to as a “k-clock,” and the resulting samples, which are samples in the optical frequency domain or “k-space,” are referred to as “k-space” samples.
In practice, the optical source is successively directed to each of a series of points on the surface of the object (e.g., the eye) being imaged, with k-space samples across the spectral bandwidth being collected at each of these points. The k-space samples corresponding to each point are processed, using well-known digital signal processing techniques, to provide image data corresponding to a range of depths in the imaged object, i.e., an “A-scan.” The A-scans across the series of points are compiled to create a B-scan; multiple B-scans, corresponding to sequential “rows” along the imaged object can be compiled to form three-dimensional image data. It will be appreciated that because of the Fourier-domain processing used in swept-source OCT, z-axis scanning, where the length of the reference arm of the interference is successively changed to obtain information at different depths in the imaged object, is not needed. Rather, depth information is obtained from the processing of the k-space samples, over a range of depths that corresponds inversely to the size of the spectral frequency increments for the k-space samples.